About CokeSpeak

Alice challenges BigFood

CokeSpeak.org will show you exactly when and how you are being deliberately deceived by food manufacturers and retailers, and those ‘nutrition professionals’ who are in the pockets of ‘Big Food’ one way or another.

There are more of them, in more places, than you may think!

All you need is the native intelligence we all possess, a decent grasp of the English language, and a nagging doubt that perhaps we should not entirely trust Humpty-Dumpty Big Food to give us completely impartial advice on our health, wellbeing and lifestyle.

You will learn what CokeSpeak is, and how to spot it when you hear it. And, when you do hear it, exactly how you can know it’s a lie. And when you find examples of it, you can FIGHT BACK by submitting a URL link to Alice here.

Credit is due in particular to the CSPI Center for Science in the Public Interest for first use of the term “CokeSpeak”. Alice uses this term to apply to all those companies and individuals who use the techniques described here, of which the Coca Cola company is merely one of a great many practitioners of the art of defending the indefensible.

CokeSpeak:A sophisticated form of language, containing half-truths dissembled as common sense. Its objective is to deceive the listener, usually for profit.

Background to the Sugar Crisis:

Most of the foods marketed and sold by Big Food are processed products, high in calories, sugar, fat, salt, additives and caffeine. Whilst there have been at least some efforts by some companies to reduce salt, fats (especially harmful trans fats) and additives, not much appears to have been done to reduce sugar.

Growth in sugar consumption over recent decades closely tracks the rise in obesity and chronic metabolic disease such as insulin resistance, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. A recent Harvard study has concluded that sugar-sweetened drinks consumption is linked to 180,000 deaths per year (1).

The financial costs of dealing with this epidemic are already unaffordable, and the personal costs of unhealthy lives are incalculable.

Sugar is everywhere, lurking amongst the most innocent of names including sucrose, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, molasses, agave syrup, honey and many more. It is added to a huge variety of unlikely processed food products in some form, and is loaded into soft drinks in quantities which would make your grandmother faint. The sugar we deliberately buy is but a small fraction of the sugar we consume.

‘I know they’re talking nonsense’, Alice thought to herself: ‘and it’s foolish to cry about it’. So she brushed away her tears, and went on as cheerfully as she could.

Sugar is aggressively marketed, in particular to children in the forms of sweets, snacks, breakfast cereals and sugary drinks. Sugar (like alcohol and nicotine) stimulates the brain’s reward pathways resulting in a vicious cycle of consumption and appetite. Childhood obesity is perhaps the most tragic aspect of this story. But it is not the only story. Fructose found primarily in sweetened drinks and juices is metabolized in the liver to liver fat, driving insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome and lifelong chronic disease.

Room for honest debate still remains, more research is always welcome, but it is clear that the manufacturers and retailers have a case to answer. Honest debate is, however, only detectable by its absence.

To the detriment of us all, the language that Big Food uses to rebut inconvenient evidence is … CokeSpeak.